India and language!
When it comes to education in India, the linguistic question has always been a fraught and emotive one. Recent discussions around the NEP have once again brought to the forefront some of the debates that we've been grappling with since independence; for instance, the question of the medium of instruction, and the relative places of English, Hindi, and other vernacular languages in our educational framework. One kind of framing of this linguistic debate, which is quite common, is as aspiration versus tradition (a dialectic which seems to underlie so many of the schisms and tensions of modern India). On one side is the role of English as an instrument of aspiration, as a gateway to economic opportunity; on the other side is the attachment to our native languages and their role as repositories of our culture and history. My view is that for the most part, there need be no dichotomy here, and that we should aim to both preserve our knowledge of our indigenous languages as well as acqui